@ironicbadger hey Alex, what's up with the YouTube thumbnails lately? Is there some sort of new tool to style them easily, or is the algorithm preferring white / yellow bold text? Or is it just coincidence that I see similar looking thumbnails with big two colored texts for the past few weeks?

Just asking specifically because of your Plex Pass pricing update video

Got myself a new, rather special H-Alpha telescope for solar photography: an Acuter Elite Phoenix 40. Still playing around with the proper settings, but I really like it so far.

This is yesterday's sun at around noon.

#astrophotography #astrodon #sunphotography

Spring is approaching, and targets visible from my south-facing balcony are about to disappear for the next few months.

One thing that is always there, though, is our Sun. Setting up my telescope takes longer than taking the actual pictures, which is nice.

#astrophotography #sun #space #sunphotography

Had some fun experiment with my data of M81 and M82, aka. Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy. I wanted to figure out how well I can combine different focal lengths. Back in April 2025, I captured 9 hours of exposure time in pure RGB at a focal length of 400 mm.

Someone on a community Discord server shot the same target at 250 mm with a similar camera, but in narrowband H-Alpha & OIII. He kindly made his data available to me.

#astrodon #astrophotography #space #astronomy

My next project I'd consider to be finished for now: M42, also known as the Orion Nebula. 24 hours of total exposure time between November and January.

Shot on my Askar FRA400 + ZWO ASI2600MC

Full resolution + details on my Astrobin profile: https://app.astrobin.com/i/7e57h4

#astrophotography #DeepSky #astronomy #Astrodon #nebula

Northern lights were photo-bombing my telescope's view of M 42 today

#astrodon #astrophotograpy #deepsky #AuroraBorealis

Did some initial tests to look into Pixinsight's HDRComposition to combine 60s and 180s exposures into one image to get some extra details in Orion's core.

So far it looks great after 8h total integration time. After extracting the stars for further editing, Pixinsight crashed and took the extracted stars with it.

Sharing it anyway

#astrodon #Astrophotography

I was too quiet on my blog in 2025. I Tried to change that by publishing a lengthy post about my #astrophotography hobby, sharing both my experiences and what I've been learning along the way.

https://sascha.sh/posts/starting-a-new-hobby-astrophotography/

#Astrodon #astronomy